Cindy Sheehan Only “Extremist” Because Anti-War Movement Is So Pathetic

Finally! I’ve been keeping a close eye on the peacenik press these last
several days as they crow with delight over the Cindy Sheehan vigil and how it
may be marking a turning-point in how the press and the country talk about the
war. Until today, none of these articles — and I mean none — have
taken Sheehan’s tax resistance seriously. Only a couple have even mentioned it
in passing.

Bill O’Reilly just howls about Sheehan’s low character in her refusal to pay
federal taxes that might put more money the Pentagon’s way.

Listening to O’Reilly and even mainstream pundits, you’d think
tax-resistance was a fresh and terrible arrival on the shores of American
protest instead of a form of resistance as old as the Republic.

But the notion that tax resistance somehow marginalizes Sheehan as an
“extremist” does highlight an important point. The aim of any serious
anti-war protest is to force a government to quit fighting, pull the troops
out and come home right now.

But Sheehan is castigated in the press, by mainstream liberals as well as
mad-dog rightists, for not leaving any wriggle-room on this central point.
She says, “Bring the troops home right now.”

Why this silence? I can think of a few reasons: One may be that a lot of Cindy
Sheehan’s appeal comes from a very short, simple description of who she is and
what she is doing — a grieving mother who isn’t convinced the loss of her son
was worth it and who just wants a moment of the president’s time. Anything
that adds to and complicates that simple message dilutes it.

Another reason may be that the right-wing slime machine has latched on to
anything they can get their hands on in attempts to make Sheehan look like a
sinister and insane monster. Anything that puts her out of the mainstream and
makes her look less like a grieving mom and more like a weirdo, they amplify
(and exaggerate and fabricate if necessary). It’s possible that their
desperate focus on Sheehan’s tax resistance has intimidated the peaceniks into
believing that this stand really is a liability and something they should
downplay or ignore.

But neither of these two reasons is really adequate. There is a limit to how
much the peace movement wants to portray Cindy Sheehan as just an ordinary
grieving mom — what makes her stand out is that she’s fighting back! And her
tax resistance is one important, confrontational, and risky part of this
stand. If you start watering down her protest in your description of her, you
make her seem more mainstream at the cost of making her seem less newsworthy.

I think maybe the real reason this part of the protest is being ignored by the
peacenik press is that it’s hard to celebrate tax resistance without inviting
the question: “well then, why are you still paying taxes?” You can
avoid camping out at Crawford and confronting Dubya like Cindy does by saying
“well, I don’t have a son who was killed in Iraq — I don’t have an angle” but
you can’t get out of joining her tax resistance that easily. If you praise her
tax resistance stand, if you admit that she’s right not to continue funding
the warmakers who took her son’s life, then you have to ask yourself why
you’re paying for the next Casey Sheehan’s casket.

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